Can't Get Enough of Your Love (24 page)

“It seems that way to me.”

“I'm not, Mama. I don't look for my daddy in every man I meet. I mean, for the most part, I met all three of them by coincidence.” Romance has lots of coincidences, if you really think it through. “I met Karl at the park while I was on a jog, I met Juan Carlos when my car broke down, and Roger came to my front door. I didn't go looking for any of them. They came to me.”

“It makes me envy you,” Mama says with a sigh. “I was never that lucky. I had to do all the work.” She sighs again. “And I let your daddy get away from me.”

“I've never asked, but Mama, why? Why did you really leave Norfolk?”

“All of what your daddy was and probably still is was too much for one man to have and one woman to handle. He was charming, handsome, strong, intelligent, and passionate.” Her eyes look far away from this table. “I never married him because I knew I would live in fear of some other, prettier woman taking him away from me. I mean, I'm … plain, you know?”

“You're not plain, Mama. I am.”

“No, I'm pretty plain, and you … you're something else. I never thought I was beautiful enough for him. Oh, I loved him, don't you ever doubt that, but I had to let him go.” Her eyes return to me. “Now, which one of these men did you truly love?”

“I think I loved them all.”

“I guess it's possible, but there you go thinking again.” She leans closer. “Who do you dream about?”

“Roger.” I don't mention the milk chocolate baby.
Mama seems okay with the idea of Roger so far, and I don't want to ruin it.

“Who do you talk to when no one's around?”

I catch my breath. Besides Jenny? Hmm. “Roger.” Again.

“And who do you talk to in your head just before you fall asleep?”

It's true.

I loved Roger the most.

“Roger.”

She leans back. “I still talk to your daddy, you know. We have conversations all the time in my mind. I still miss him.”

“Do you know where he is?”

She shakes her head. “Your daddy is in the wind or on the sea, where he belongs, where he can be a man. He tried to make a man out of you, right?”

I look at my hands, hands roughened by football, fishing, and chopping wood. “He, um, he sort of did.” I sigh. “What am I going to do, Mama?”

“Well, I have a suggestion, and it's only a suggestion, now. I don't want you to think I'm giving you advice, now that you're on your own and don't need me anymore.”

Ouch. “I'll always need you, Mama.”

“I knew that the second you told me not to call.”

Ouch again. “I'll take any advice I can get.”

She scrunches up her lips, then relaxes them, the sure sign she has made a decision. “I think you should go talk to each of them.”

“What?”

“Try to explain to them what you just explained to me.”

No way! “I can't do that.”

“Child, look what you've
already
done! If you can date three men at the same time without them catching on for, what, two months, you can do
anything
.”

There's too much doubt in my mind for that. “They won't want to see me.”

“Maybe. For now. You might want to wait a bit. I'm sure they miss you.”

“I doubt it.” About all they probably miss is my booty.

“Who do you miss the most?”

That is a loaded question. “Well, when I'm … horny”—and I can't believe I'm saying this to my mama!—”I miss Karl. When I'm feeling unappreciated, I miss Juan Carlos. He tries to take care of my every need. And when I'm …” I stop.

“When you're what?”

Why am I just now realizing this? “What I was going to say is that … all the other times, I miss Roger. What does that mean, Mama?”

“It means … what it means, though it might mean …” She stops.

“What?”

“It might mean that your love is deeper for Roger than for the others. It might also mean that you love the others for what they can do
for
you, and that you love Roger for what he can do
with
you.”

Damn, my mama is wise! “I never looked at it that way before.”

“This Roger sounds like the real deal.”

“And you're okay with that?”

She shrugs. “I don't have to live with him, right?”

“Right.” But then I pout. “But he was all set to marry me, and then I really fucked things up.”

I expect her to scold me for cussing, but she doesn't. “I suppose I could buy a plot at Fairview Cemetery.”

“What?”

“Well, I have sort of met him. He was in my kitchen once, remember? And he wasn't that unhandsome.” Her face clouds over. “But, child, that hair. He could be Lucille Ball's son!”

A laugh escapes from my mouth so loudly that Mama's hair moves. “You'd really do that? You'd call him about a plot?”

“He's a smart man. He'll see right through that. It was just an idea.” She touches the back of my hand. “But for your own sake, I think you should speak to all three of them.”

I don't know if I can do that. But they went away hating me, and I can't have that. Not after all that good loving.

She stands. “You hungry?”

“Yes.”

“You're looking pretty skinny, girl. They may not recognize you. Let's eat, and you better have you some seconds.”

And as I eat, I think to myself: She's right. They won't recognize me when they see me again, because for the first time in
their
lives—and mine, too—I'm going to be myself.

B
ut first I have to get my hair done.

Damaged. My hair is damaged.

But when I walk into Mama's kitchen later that night, I know she'll take care of me. I have memories of her warming up irons on the stove, just sitting on a kitchen chair working on her own hair with an oven mitt, those irons, and a little jar of gel, and she never used a mirror. I have to have a mirror and an arsenal of curling irons.

And it still doesn't come out right.

She hands me a towel and points to the sink.

“I can wash my own hair, Mama.”

“I know you can. Just let me do it, for old time's sake.”

“Okay.” I stand in front of the sink, dipping my head under the faucet.

“You had better let the water warm up first, Erlana.”

I twist the cold knob. “I need to wake my head up first.”

Cold water on a warm head … Mama's strong fingers massaging in the shampoo … water warming up…
rinsing … soap in my ears … repeating two more times … “Surprised there aren't any birds up in this nest” … ten years old again with shorter hair … Mama humming something slow, sad, and beautiful …

“What are you going to do about those ashy knees?”

“Mama, I—”

“I tell you time and time again to use more lotion. And are you getting behind your ears good?”

“I try, Mama, but—”

“Try harder, Erlana, and quit trimming those nails so close. You aren't chewing on them again, are you?”

“No.”

“Uh-huh. And wear your good shoes and that skirt
all
day tomorrow. I know you put some sweatpants and some sneakers in your book bag. I wasn't born yesterday.”

“But Mama, those shoes hurt my feet.”

“They make you look like a lady.”

“And that skirt makes my legs cold. And I can't have nails and play ball, too….”

“Relax,” Mama says.

I try, but I have too many memories of my head in a kitchen sink. I have stronger neck muscles than most women because I was always trying to get my head up out of that sink. Why couldn't I wear a baseball cap like the boys? It would have been so much easier for Mama. Why did I have to wear skirts and dresses? Most days I was the only girl in my class dressed that way. Why couldn't I just have a ponytail? Why did I have all that pink gooey stuff put in my hair every single day? The smell followed me around all day.

She dries my hair with a towel, then plasters my head with conditioner, setting an egg timer for five minutes. “You sign a lease on that place?”

I sit at the table, drying my face, trying to forget my childhood. “No.”

“So it's an open-ended arrangement, then?”

“I guess.” I don't ask why she's so interested because I know why. She wants to know how soon I can be home if I wanted to move back.

“Well, I want you to know you can come back anytime.”

“Thanks for the offer, but I'm going to try to stick it out.”

She turns from the sink. “I knew you'd say that. But if it gets too cold out there, you just come on home, okay? Snow in the country is heavier and deeper than snow in the city because you know they don't plow all those country roads, and that little house probably doesn't have much insulation.”

I could argue with her, but it's probably true. Everything seems bigger in the country, and even the smallest breezes flow through that cottage.

“And you can always come home if there's something you want to watch on TV.”

I blink. Damn. Football season is coming, and I can barely get any reception! Pre-season NFL and college football start in August, so I am going to need a satellite dish or an antenna quick!

“And I'll make those nachos you like….”

She doesn't play fair. She melts a pound of Velveeta and adds a jar of hot salsa, serving it on some big blue tortilla chips with freshly cut jalapeños.

“I'll keep them in mind.”

The timer goes off, I stand, and she rinses the conditioner from my hair. I towel dry my hair while walking to the bathroom, where I fire up the blow-dryer. My hair has gotten so long!

“You need your ends done, girl,” Mama says.

They are looking pretty ragged.

“You want me to trim them?”

But my hair is wild and free, and suddenly I don't even want to comb it. “No.”

“No?”

“No.”

She sighs. “Suit yourself.”

Another miracle has just happened. I turn to see her facial expression, but she's already out of the bathroom. Suit myself? She has
never
said that to me. All those years she experimented on my head with straws and extensions and Shirley Temple curls, and she says, “Suit yourself?”

I look at the wild thing in the mirror.

This suits me.

O
nce I get my wild self back to Jenny's dollhouse, I ask myself one simple question:

Who the hell am I? Who is Erlana “Lana” “Peanut” Joy Cole?

Okay, two questions. I was never any good at math.

I let my daddy define me until I was eight, and he turned me into a Smurfs-loving, football-playing, tenacious tomboy. Then I came to Roanoke and tried to become what Mama wanted me to be—a girl. At least I let her
think
I was trying to be a girl. I wasn't. I was a tomboy in a dress, still tenacious, replacing the Smurfs with boys but never giving up football. My peers helped redefine me through middle school, mainly with me doing the exact
opposite
of what they were doing, and reverse peer pressure or something made me “me” during high school. But since high school, I have had four crummy breakups, and for nine months, I let three different men define and redefine “me.” Does that make the real “me” beyond definition? Is there any hope for “me”?

I have strange thoughts while I fish.

I'm not exactly fishing. I'm just standing on the dock at high noon on a scorching July day casting a sinker into the reeds, probably knocking some poor bass in the head. I had left a container of worms out on the dock after doing a little fishing last night—not a nibble. I think my wild hair scared all the fish away. And by the time I woke up this morning, all the worms were, um, toasted flat from the sun. I know I'm dehydrated, too. My scalp is turning darker black (if that's possible), my wild hair is on fire, and even my eyes are probably sunburned. As for the rest of me, I'm looking pretty damn good—sweaty, but slim and trim.

Damn, I'm lonely.

No, Lana. Don't you sink into the green, mucky, moss-covered pond of despair and think that another person has to define or complete you. Your development has been arrested, you're just incomplete, you're just … you're just a damn tadpole that still has its tail. You'll never be a bullfrog if you don't lose your tail.

I look at my own tail. If I come out here every day this month, I'll have a white girl's booty. Where did my booty go? I pull out my shirt to look at my girls. Damn, y'all have shrunk, too.

I'm melting, I'm melting …

I think all my pores are draining at once. Maybe this is what withdrawal feels like. Maybe this is the rehab I need to rid me of the memories. Maybe I can just sweat these men out of my mind—

They all made me sweat like this.

They all made me ooze.

Nasty.

I made them ooze, too….

Nastier.

But I didn't collect any of it.

Nastiest.

Change the subject.

I need to get a satellite dish or something. Yeah. Then I'll get all the sports packages, all the NFL and college games. I would be any man's dream girl, though I need a bigger TV, one of those wide-screen ones I'll never be able to afford. Maybe I can rent-to-own one. Yeah. But could they get a wide-screen TV into Jenny's dollhouse? Hmm.

But wait. If I get all that, a man might love me for my TV and not for me. Hmm. Knowing my budget, I'll probably go to Radio Shack and get an antenna. That should be enough. I need to keep things simple. I don't need the Outdoor Channel when the outdoors is right outside my window. I don't need any of those shopping channels. I'll just go shop … at Wal-Mart, since my funds are pretty low until the end of September. And why would anyone watch a cooking show? Go cook! No wonder Americans are so obese. We sit and watch what we used to do! We watch what we could be doing! Crazy!